You gotta believe in something....

I find myself in the slightly unusual place of feeling as though I have nothing to say. It’s not as though there hasn’t been interesting things happening, either: the Womanspirit Rising conference I went to in early November in Christchurch was amazing, and there has been plenty of interesting things happening in other spaces. It’s just that …. I don’t have words for them. Maybe if I just try and reflect on stuff, words will come.

Womanspirit Rising felt like me finding my foremothers: all those courageous women who fought for justice and lived their spiritual truths in the third feminist wave in the 70s and 80s – and suddenly there they were, and there I was. I was the youngest by about 15 years (which was mildly depressing, in that I really hoped there would be other women my age finding their truth and journeying) but it was immensely inspiring to talk and be with women who have walked the same road I am walking. It has been so lonely at times over the last few years, exploring what it means for me for the Divine to not just wear a female face and form, but to BE the feminine divine, with all the change of emphasis and turning around that that has meant for me. At the conference, I realised I was not alone, but somehow I need to get other women travelling with me.

There were a mix of women from all backgrounds: christian, pagan, Wiccan, “nones” and “dones”, but all of us were looking for that great brightness who has come with so many names over the years: Inanna, Isis, Ishtar, Hekate, Kali, Mary the Magdala, Mary Queen of Heaven, Hine-anu-one, Hine-nui-e-te-po, Brigid, Dana – the dying and life-giving one.

For me, I think the gift of the day was the sense of connectedness with all of these women and their journeys and stories – the sense of weaving together the rope that is stronger than any one of us alone. It was kind of summed up in this gorgeous clip (Nina Paley You Gotta Believe):

I love the dancing Goddesses in this video - all those ancient ways we recognised her, grooving away in their own way. I especially like watching the Venus of Willendorf having her party, with all her wobbly bits grooving too. Such freedom in who she is!

So am I finding freedom in who I am? What a good question, and to be honest, I don't know yet. What I do know is that there is so much more below the surface, below that carefully-cultivated christian top layer. The "spiritual archaeology" my new director recommended is giving me the "permission" I think I still needed to look at those other layers: Grail myths, Egyptian mythology, music, storytelling, water - even endo and all its attendant lessons that I never wanted to learn but had no choice about. Who knows what will come of it? I don't, but I warrant that Someone does....

Just a last thought - I remember reading Mary Daly's quote that 'The word "sin" is derived from the Indo-European root "es" meaning "to be'. When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, "to be" in the fullest sense is "to sin".'

What does "sinning" look like if it also means becoming or being? What might that look like? Now there's an interesting question!

Praxis

My husband is awesome.

A few months ago, he came home from a gallery setup in great excitement (he volunteers at the local art society - he is a potter and photographer). The pottery exhibition he was setting up included a piece he thought I would like. He dragged me down to the final setup (he was protecting me from the exhibition opening - I loathe openings! Too many people in a small space trying to sound important and pretentious about art!) to show me something. One of his friends had made a copy of the Venus of Willendorf out of clay, mounted on a stone block. He bought it for me....

And then, for my birthday, he got me a singing bowl. I have been wanting one of them for so long - every time I went into TradeAid or anywhere else I was gently ringing all of the bowls... So now the Venus of Willendorf has a candle holder in front surrounded by a malachite bracelet, and a singing bowl, and a koru, and a huge chunk of amethyst geode that hubby has had since he was a boy, and flowers when they are fresh.... It's quite a lovely place on that part of the display unit, and there is something about ringing the bowl when I light a candle that brings peace like silent snow. 

The whole display unit is bristling with candles anyway, as we have our tending candles up there for when we Tend the Flame every 20 days from sundown to sundown, in honour of Brigid (St Bridget, Bride, Brigid - Celtic fire goddess, keeper of hearth and inspiration and also co-opted as a saint). We've been Tending for more than a year now as a family and it's something we all enjoy. We use an electric candle overnight and when we're out of the house but try to use a real flame the rest of the time. 

And in our room, I have a statue of Mary as Our Lady of Grace that I've had for years, and candles in porcelain pots, and alabaster pots, and it's all about intentions and honouring her. 

It's kind of odd actually. The Venus of Willendorf is earthy, ancient, fat and full of grace - not pretty, but powerful. Our Lady is porcelain and gold, serene, delicate, pregnant with possibilities, yet slim and beautiful. Quite different images, but both have such power, such courage. Brigid's Flame is fire - heat, light, inspiration, warmth. Earth, Air, Fire - maybe I am the Water? It is certainly my place of inspiration!

Sense of divinity

Last weekend was an interesting one. I went to the Progressive Christian conference held at St Andrew's on the Terrace. The Friday chimed with all of the work I've been doing on breaking stigma around mental illness at work, and preparing for Mental Health Awareness Week and the launch of all the resources we've been working on - but it was doing it from a different angle. I have only been in a church three times since the abortive St James' AGM in March and in that time my thinking has really shifted again, so I was a bit nervous about being with people that described themselves as Christians, as my experience of people who use that term are often anything but loving and compassionate.

However, I was pleasantly surprised - I met people that I could have genuine conversations with about issues that mean something to me: how we treat our Mother the Earth; how we treat other people that wear skin over their divinity; how we walk with kindness and gentleness in the world; how we find Godde, God, Goddess - the Greatness that is the Brightness of All - in the midst of all things and in everywhere.

The most interesting sessions were the one that Emily Colgan ran on reading the bible from the perspective of Earth, employing a hermeneutic of suspicion that I am familiar with from feminist theology. I found this helpful as I haven't touched the bible for months, preferring Matthew Fox's theology, the Gnostic Gospels, or Goddess writings. There may be a way back there for me, employing the hermeneutic of suspicion again.

The best session of all though was Sande Ramage's Jungian "releasing the Christian ties that bind" session. I cried - suddenly it seemed I had found someone else who has travelled the same route I am travelling, and is further along the road. When she talked about her experience of divinity as Goddess and swapped between he and she as naturally as breathing, it felt as though I had found what I had been trying for years to get into the church.

Not sure where this leaves me though. I will continue to read, to seek. Hubby and daughter gave me a singing bowl for my birthday, which now sits alongside the pottery version of the Venus of Willendorf that one of hubby's pottery friends made and we bought a few months ago. It is astonishing, the sense of divinity that comes when I ring the bowl and light a candle. Maybe that's all I do for a bit: small ritual actions, lighting candles, calling on her, singing bowls, breathing, walking on her breasts the earth. Smelling the jonquils in my garden. Sinking into the depths of the wonderful bathtub in our gorgeous new bathroom that hubby built. Being aware. Writing. Poems are beginning to bubble again....

I will not participate in my own invisibility

I saw that quote today, and I like it.

Today has been a day of me deciding that I will stand up for what matters to me. I heard about the "Women's March on Washington" in protest of the inauguration of the Orange Despot in America, and I decided that I would attend that march. Even more beautifully, my daughter (aged 10) also decided to go, in her full Girl Guide uniform, as she identified that Guides is about including everyone.

I have never marched before. I have never protested before. But now, I cannot stand by silent, as a complicit bystander, in what I see going on in the world. My friends, who are rainbow, inclusive, women, black, progressive, are frightened. I cannot be silent. So I marched, with nearly a thousand Wellingtonians.

I saw a number of placards I liked: my favourite was "Kate Shepherd sent me".

Then, this afternoon, I met with a friend from church to discuss language for God, which was really encouraging as she uses feminine names for God as well and would be happy to see them used in public worship.

And tonight, we met with the church wardens to discuss naming and language for God - for the first time I feel that someone is listening. The question will be whether there is doing as well.

I will not participate in my own invisibility. I see these three things linked: I am finally having the courage to stand up and say that this is not okay, that the silencing of some of God's most ancient names and nature is not okay, and that it is an issue of justice as well as a issue of understanding and seeing God's depth and beauty - and I finally have the courage not to be a bystander or complicit any more.

It's really tiring though....

Black Madonna

I had a hammer-to-the-head moment today. This last couple of weeks since the house went on the market have been insanely crazy, and I've really struggled to keep my focus on what really matters to me.

One of my new Sisters in the Community of Solitude has a real passion for the Black Madonna. As we've been getting to know each other, we've begun to talk about the Black Madonna as an ancient route of the divine feminine to bridge into our world, and I started to read up about these ancient manifestations: icons, statues, and the devotional practices and legends that have grown up around them. The "hammer to the head" was that the statues of the Black Madonna traditionally are seated on the Seat of Wisdom, and many of the writers I've read so far make a clear link between Sophia and the Black Madonna. She is the darkness, the fecundity of the earth, the richness of the shadow, the dark night of the soul.

I need to find out more about her. She symbolises the power and strength of the earth, the darkness of knowing God, the depths of the night, the courage to be and to endure. I've always had a connection with Mary and sensed that there was great strength in her, but finding her this way is a whole different experience.

I have been there

One of my uni friends loaned me 84 Charing Cross Road many years ago when I was a student. I didn't know the author at all but immediately resonated with her love of all things literature and all things England. The sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, includes a description of Helene Hanff's passion for England - how she used to go to movies just to see English streets and buildings.

Last weekend, we watched Paddington for daughter's birthday - we missed this one at the theatre last year and had promised her we'd see it. It was quite well done and almost as much fun as the books, but what got all of us was the locations. "We've been there!" "That's the London Eye!" "That's Big Ben!" and "That's the Museum of Natural History!" Tonight, hubby had a movie on from TV and it was the same - location-spotting. The movie was dreadful but on the odd occasion when I glanced up from my book, the locations not the action caught my eye. 

I've finally been there. I have walked those streets until I wanted to amputate my feet with a spoon and my knees were so crippled I was sure they would never straighten out again. I have ridden the Underground and a double-decker bus. I have been in the British Museum and seen the Mildenhall Treasure and the Elgin Marbles, and could have cheerfully stayed there for an entire week looking at stuff. I have scraped my jaw off the floor in the National Gallery. I have walked Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, and found my ancestors' memorials and the place where one of them was executed (long story). I have fallen in love with Canterbury Cathedral and will never be the same again. I have celebrated Evensong by candlelight in York Minster and seen Mistress Quickly and Falstaff dodging around the Shambles. I have slithered around the Yorkshire Moors in the snow, and watched my family sledding at Chatsworth. I have walked in Chatsworth House and fallen in love with its gardens and library - and just fallen over in the snow! I have floated on Coniston Water and seen Peel/Wild Cat Island with my own eyes. I have walked through Hogsmeade and seen Hogwarts. I have eaten pheasant pie and enjoyed the warmth and friendliness of a 350-year-old British pub. I have touched the original Rocket and stood in the cab of Mallard. I have seen with my own eyes many-million-year-old dinosaur bones and stood inside a leaf at the Museum of Natural History.

I am blessed and very grateful.  

I really must watch Pride and Prejudice again and revisit Chatsworth-as-Pemberley....

Frosty

Last night I was re-reading some of my favourite poetry by Robert Frost, the American 20th century poet who is probably most famous for his poem 'The Road Less Travelled' - the one that ends 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood |  And I, I took the one less travelled by, | And that has made all the difference.'

I did re-read 'The Road Less Travelled' last night, along with some other favourites such as 'Mending Wall', 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening', and 'After Apple-picking'. But the one that particularly struck me last night was 'The Wood-pile'.

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

I've always liked that poem, but like with most of Frost's work, I've usually focused on the image of the person he describes, the one who 'lived in turning to fresh tasks'. However, last night I found myself touched by the opening description of the walk in the woods: the hard snow, the lines of slim trees that all look the same. It took me back to Grace Dieu Priory, a ruined Augustinian priory near Shepshed in the UK. We went there on one very cold, snowy afternoon, walking through the woods in the late afternoon sun (at 2pm!), with all the slim trees everywhere the same, and the snap and squeak of snow underfoot, and you couldn't tell where you were or where you were going. However instead of finding an abandoned woodpile, we found a ruined monastery, sacred ground iced with snow and holding a breath of the holy in the cold.

Speaking faith

Tonight I am sitting here in the cold of an autumn night with the cat next to me on the arm of my chair, reflecting on a blog post I have just read. John Shore has rapidly become one of my heroes of the faith: a passionate, articulate person who has shown me that there are others out there that think like me, that my lonely faith journey here in smalltown New Zealand isn't alone. The story I read is entitled Eight "Bible-believing" churches vs one progressive church, and it is a sad indictment of the narrowness and sickness of the "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" churches that I left with relief 15 years ago.

At the bottom of that article, John has a summary of what a progressive Christianity could look like, and I want to summarise his summary here in my own words. This is a good summary of what I have come to know over the past 15 years or so.

1. Jesus was divine, but Jesus was also human. Jesus allowed the crucifixion as evidence of God's love for us - it was never any kind of punishment or "substitution" for us - it was an act of ultimate love.
2. The Bible is not a contract or literally dictated by God. It is a complex set of different kinds of literature that is human's record of God's dealings, filtered through their understanding and time period. God always requires us to choose love, compassion, and kindness over any other action or so-called biblical law because love is the highest good there is - God is love, and where there is love, there is God. 
3. Christianity is about nothing more (or less) than living a loving, caring life that is gentle towards all others, and towards the earth.
4. Where there is love, there is God. Love comes in many forms, and can and does include love between people of the same gender. The scholarship stating that St Paul never wrote anything condemning homosexual love is much more convincing than the scholarship claiming he did. 
5. God does not require any person to submit to another in an unequal power relationship, including between men and women.
6. God is beyond gender, and therefore it is as accurate to speak of God as she as it is as he. Sophia is an ancient naming of God that is totally valid biblically and historically. 
7. God introduces herself in history through many different ways, places, and people. There is true knowledge of God everywhere that people love and are loved, and in the stories where we are taught to love and act with compassion.
8. There is no support in the Bible for a hell where people are eternally punished, nor is this consistent with a God that loves us inordinately. 
9. God loves us and wants to teach us, not punish us. God uses ordinary everyday circumstances to do this.
10. God and power are not normally a good mix. Church and state are separate and should remain so, but we who love God are called to speak truth to power in love.
11. We are called to love. God handles the rest. 
12. God made it, evolution shapes it. There is not, nor has there ever been, any conflict between faith and science. God created the capacity for change and growth in all things, just as God herself changes and grows. God delights in our human curiosity and desire for knowledge, because God made us that way! 
13. Divorce is not immoral and in some cases is a good idea where power is being misused. God loves everyone, even when relationships don't work. 
14. Our identifier as to whether we are truly God's is how we treat each other. 
15. God gave us a brain, a will, and a desire to learn. Asking questions is right, and "because the Bible says so" is not an answer - it is an interpretation. The bible is always open to interpretation, but if the interpretation means someone acts without love to others, their interpretation cannot be true. God never guides us to act without love. 

This is as close to a summary of my understanding of God and her ways as I can currently make right now. Thank you, John Shore, for helping me arrive at it.

Missing liturgy

A while ago, I reflected on whether it was possible to be homesick for a place I have only been once. I concluded it was eminently possible: Canterbury Cathedral has so stamped itself on my heart that I know I will never truly be the same. It is the heart of our ancient faith in England (although not the oldest place of worship there), a place of worship and pilgrimage and seeking for more than 1500 years.

I knew when we came home that it would be difficult to come back from the visceral, whole-of-body, whole-spirit experience of cathedral worship in the UK: where the very stones seem to be painted with prayer and the whole place shimmers with the organ and the bells and the singing; incense, beeswax, body and blood. Immersive church, where everything is done excellently, reverently, and with holy purpose.

Sure, it's not perfect: they've only just figured out that women are called to the episcopate too (we're 25 years ahead of them there!) and the language is seriously patriarchal - but there is hope in the movements of inclusive church that that will change. What won't is the desire to do all things "decently and in order", with love and passion and skill.

What I have realised is that I need that liturgy done with love and passion and skill. I need the music and love and prayer and holy purpose. I need the Office, the daily round of prayer, painted on my heart like light through stained glass. I need this. Liturgy done poorly, bad music, trite lyrics - I cannot separate myself from it. It becomes like sandpaper on my soul, grinding me in all my most tender places.

Some people might say this is me being overly sensitive, too "high", not being "of the people" - snobbish, even. But for me, worship is not of the people. It is our gift to God, and should it not be the best of what we are capable? It should be the best music, the best singing, the best words, trusting that God, by some alchemy of her own, will make them worthy of her worthiness, for nothing we offer God will ever be enough. But it should be beautiful.

And when it is not, then it is time to listen to what my heart says, what my spirit knows. I cannot return to Canterbury, but our pilgrimage there has shown me my heart. I need to be honest to myself and I cannot hide any longer.

Momento mori

The last few weeks have been tough for us. Between hubby and I, we have lost three friends and my uncle: one of hubby's friends from Camera Club, two of my Kinleith friends/colleagues, and my uncle. Death seems to be stalking rather close right now.

I can't quite put into words what I am thinking about. Momento mori, the remembrance of death, is a monastic activity: remembering that this earth is not all that there is, and that we live our life as well as we can in the 'sure and certain hope' that when we leave this place, when our journey ends here, there is a door that is opened and Sophia will welcome us home. 

That is my prayer for my uncle and our friends: that their doors have opened into a place of joy and love and hope; and for us that are left behind, may Sophia walk with us in the valley of the shadow and lead us to her hope. 

Maundy Thursday

And here we are again. Maundy Thursday. Feet are washed. Church is stripped. Pictures are covered. John Rutter's Requiem and Taverner's wonderfully emotive Song for Athene have been playing. Prayers on the floor of the living room with a lighted candle. Tears in the Garden. Songs at the table. Blazing moonlight and a touch of frosty dew.

Homesick for pilgrimage

I've often wondered whether it was possible to be truly homesick for a place that isn't really home. Last night, I got my answer: absolutely.

Part of our trip to the UK was a pilgrimage. We visited three cathedrals and several holy sites while we were over there. We started our pilgrimage on Christmas Day in NZ's northernmost Cathedral, Holy Trinity Auckland, which was pretty special as it was 200 years to the day since the preaching of the first Christian sermon in this land. We continued it with English cathedrals and holy places.

York Minister is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The feral GPS took us right into the centre of the old city within the walls - to the point that we nearly ran into the pedestrian-only zone through the Shambles (oops); but as a way to see the Cathedral, driving up Museum Street to the York Information Centre pretty much can't be beaten. The Minster just loomed up out of the frost, with the morning light behind it, shimmering on the golden stone, and the Heart of Yorkshire tracery in the Great Window catching the sun. Inside, it's even better. I literally had to scrape my jaw off the floor when we walked into the nave and looked up. I have never seen anything so lovely as those pillars of stone reaching for the sky, and the gilded bosses and ribbed ceiling. We did one of the guided tours, which was very interesting but quite long. I loved the crypt, with the tomb of St William of York (very simple, a single block of stone with a candle burning on it), and the ancient paintings. We went back later on that day for evensong in the quire. Candles, choir (a visiting choir - the Minster's one was on holiday but they were very good), and that thunderously gorgeous organ. Worship was a whole body experience: the feel of the organ, the smell of wax and candles, the music, the silence. Prayers offered for the prayer intentions left in the Minster. Very down to earth and grounded in reality, even in the midst of the glorious music.

Sheffield Cathedral on New Year's Day: very quiet and peaceful. Reminded me a lot of the feel of Wellington Cathedral of St Paul although it's much much older and looks nothing like Wellington's "big pink sarcophagus"! It's not one of the "famous" ones but it was very lovely. We liked the fact you could see the Norman, Gothic, and later additions very clearly, and it had a gorgeous chapel to the Holy Spirit that I particularly liked. It also had the coolest of all the nativities we saw: made of Sheffield steel, about 1.5m high, and somehow the makers had made that steel very winsome and gentle.

Grace Dieu Priory was not on our original itinerary: my sister-in-law suggested it as it was just up the road from their place near Loughborough. We got there by a very cold walk through English woods in the snow, which was interesting in itself: I was quite surprised by the lack of undergrowth, bushes etc - just trees, and they seemed fairly widely spaced. I don't think it was deliberately planted but it had a "managed" feel. The priory itself is a ruin, but it was beautiful. The stonework was all iced with thick snow, and the walls rose out of snowy fields. The late afternoon light was very kind to the stonework, and the whole place had a kind of breathless hush, almost as though it was waiting for something. It had the feel of a "thin place": it knew it had once been holy ground, and the sense of consecration was still there. It was very cold! Having the deep snow helped the sense of hush too. The pond beneath the priory was frozen solid (small daughter threw a good-sized rock just to make sure and it skidded for several metres!).

Most people wouldn't consider Stonehenge a holy place, but I do. Most modern scholarship seems to think that it, and the landscape around it, was holy to the prehistoric peoples, and that Stonehenge was a place of worship. I certainly sensed that when I was there: It is so old, so unbelievably old, and it was in use for over 1000 years for whatever the ancients did there. It has left a mark on both the physical landscape and the landscape of Spirit. I spent some time trying to listen to the place (rather difficult when it's swarming with tourists!). I got the sense that Stonehenge isn't quite sure what it is anymore, but that when it's quiet, after dark or at the turnings of the year, it would go back in time a long long way. It would be a place of awe, and to me, that's what worship is: finding the awe, the marks of our recognition of the numinous, in places, times, music, art, and people - the places where God has touched us and we have touched God.

I suspect the National Gallery isn't on a list of holy places for many people either, but there were so many wonderful works of art, many of them altarpieces or great artist's explorations of religious themes that it was definitely part of our pilgrimage. So many artists, so many places to go in the world through the art, so many themes of love and beauty, power and betrayal, peace and war and everything in between. Highlights too numerous to mention, but seeing Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael in the same building was pretty amazing, not to mention Holbein, Constable, Turner, Degas, and a whole lot more.

Westminster Abbey was a different kind of holy: the holiness of the ordinary, the holiness that we find through living our lives and contributing to society. It also turned into a very personal moment, when I found a shrine to one of my ancestors, and the tomb of another (a Dean of Westminster). Did not expect that at all! Partly because of the number of people there, it was hard to get a sense of the Abbey as a working church, except at the prayers on the hour (when one of the Canons requested everyone to be still for a few moments while they offered prayer). We didn't go to the prayers at St Edward the Confessor's tomb, although I did spend a few moments reflecting there. I found it hard to get a sense of the architecture too, because there were so many monuments and grave markers - I found some old friends, like CV Stanford, Howells, Dryden, Keats, Shakespeare, and rather endearingly, CS Lewis (no Tolkien though). Also Queens Elizabeth and Mary (in a shared grave, rather beautifully). Henry V, and Henry IV.

The jewel in the crown, and the finale of our pilgrimage, was Canterbury Cathedral itself. We were staying in the beautiful, peaceful Cathedral Lodge within the precincts of the Cathedral - it was tasteful, comfortable, and luxuriously beautiful in a very understated way. What was amazing was how the noise of the city just disappeared when you went through the walls into the precinct. The old city walls are stone and incredibly thick: the grounds are almost silent. The Cathedral opened on us like a revelation as we came through the gates from Quenensgate. After a very late lunch we went in. The sense of prayer and Presence hits you the moment you walk through the doors - there is a holy hush in the building not of any person's making. It just is. We were blessed enough to arrive about 15mins after Saturday evensong had begun (we got there about 3.30pm), so there was a tide of glorious music and resonant organ everywhere. We went to explore the crypt, beginning with praying at the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket, and then visiting the various chapels in the crypt - all with evensong washing over us, even through the thick stone of the ancient Norman crypt. There are some very ancient wall paintings in one of the chapels that gave us a tiny sense of the riot of colour the Cathedral would have once been, but it was the atmosphere of the place that kept stilling us. The place where St Thomas' body lay, in the Chapel of St Mary of the Undercroft; the place where his tomb was before they built the shrine (that Henry VIII pulled down). The single candle that burns where the shrine once was. And of course the tomb of Edward the Black Prince. Over 1500 years of continuous prayer has marked this place. The very stones pray and praise.

The next day we went to choral eucharist there, in the quire, with the light blue and gold and red through the stained glass. Incense. Singing. Organ. Psalms sung to chant like I've never heard them before. Processions of readers, the Gospels, holy gifts. Receiving communion at the High Altar of Canterbury Cathedral. The taste of port on my lips, the holy body and blood. More singing, and hearing the purity of those boys' voices soaring in the Anthem.... Prayers, very down to earth, for ordinary blessings, ordinary pains, ordinary joys. Being encouraged to pray the Lord's Prayer in our own language - I started in Maori but got lost amongst all the English! Blessing the water for the holy water font. Finishing with Psalm 150 for the Recessional, soaking the stones in praise and prayer yet again.

And at the end of the service, gathering with Canon Nick in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Undercroft for our pilgrim blessing, giving thanks for the journey we had made and the one we were to make home. Holding Canterbury specially in my heart, trying not to cry as we left. None of us wanted to leave. Trying to carry Canterbury with me, St Thomas, the Martyrdom, the crypt, and the praise soaked into the stones.

Can I be homesick for a place I don't belong to? Yes, I can. I'm homesick for Canterbury. I am homesick for the Presence of that place, for the stillness, the silence, the beauty of the worship, the smell of incense, the thunder of the organ and boys' voices soaring in praise. Beautiful stone and light and glass. The warmth and kindness of the welcome we received from everyone. The place of martyrdom, destination of millions of pilgrims like us through the centuries. The place marked by God's presence and our recognition of God's presence.

Now I need to find those places here, find a way to bring it home to smalltown New Zealand, land of sheep, green fields and bright sunshine. It's going to be a long job.

A modern day pilgrim

Pilgrimage.

The word sounds a bit old-fashioned, a bit musty, a bit redolent of old schoolrooms and tattered copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—those wonderfully funny (and sometimes slightly naughty!) stories told by a group of pilgrims in the Middle Ages, travelling together on the famous Winchester-Canterbury pilgrimage route to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. How could this possibly be relevant in New Zealand in the 21st century, so far from all the famous pilgrimage routes of Europe (and the theology that said that pilgrims earned merit in God’s eyes by visiting holy places)?

We decided to find out. We joined a pilgrimage organised by Whakatane Parish to the sites associated with Wiremu Tamihana and Tārore: one of the first converts to Christianity in the 1830s, the peacemaker during the Waikato Land Wars; and the little girl who was murdered at Wairere Falls, and whose copy of a Māori translation of the Gospel of Luke was stolen and touched the hearts of her murderer, her father, and the great chief Te Rauparaha with the message of holy peace.

I began to better understand those pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales: travelling together on a bus wasn’t quite the same as riding on horseback, but the same sense of camaraderie and enjoyment, the same urge to tell stories, to learn about each other, seemed to be as present in these modern-day pilgrims as in the ones in Chaucer’s time. Partly it was a way to pass the time between sites, but it was also a chance to find out how we came to be there, to get to know each other, and to share our joy in God’s love.

Praying at the very simple little grave of Tārore, standing next to that little white cross and picket fence out in the glorious spring sunshine of the Waikato is probably a different experience from praying in the chapel of St Thomas, but nevertheless, it was a “still place”, with all the wildflowers blowing in the breeze and the sun soft on our faces, and the sense of this small girl’s love for God and message of gentleness and forgiveness close all around us. We could see the Wairere Falls directly across from her grave, some 10-12km away, and had a sense of the sad journey her father had to bring her body home and his own struggle not to seek revenge for her murder, but to be faithful to the way of peace he had chosen.

The stained glass windows in All Saints’ Matamata commemorate both Wiremu Tamihana and Tārore in a stunning, modern style. There she sits, at the base of the Falls under the kowhāi, with tui and piwakawaka (fantails) fluttering about her, reading her Gospel. Another window nearby shows St Francis preaching to the birds of New Zealand that same message of compassionate love and peaceful courage.

St Thomas à Becket has had pilgrims coming to his grave for nearly a thousand years, after he was murdered by a greedy king for standing up for the faith and the church of his time. Tārore died in 1836, on her way to the mission school in Tauranga, after it was moved from the location near her home, and her grave has been a place of prayer ever since.

Both Thomas’ and Tārore’s stories inspire us to journey with them in the way of God, the way of compassion and love, the struggle to forgive and find peace even in the midst of bitter pain and loss. They tell us that listening to and learning from the saints who have gone before us is important—not to put them on pedestals, but to hear their human voices, their frustrations and their triumphs, and inspiring us with their steadfast courage in the face of loss and risk as they travelled with God in their own day, and as we travel with God in ours and find our own courage and hope with them.

Pilgrimage in 2014? Oh, I think so.

This article first appeared in the St Luke's Parish (Rotorua) magazine Reaching Out, St Luke's Day/Advent edition 2014

Inequality

One of the things I have been reflecting on for a long time is inequality of language, particularly in a worship setting. Those of you who are regular readers here will know that I am journeying through a sea-change in my own experience of God's goodness: from a small picture of God as "father" and "son" to a much bigger, deeper understanding of God that includes Mother, Lady, Sophia - Holy Wisdom.

So what really happened to the women? Where did they all go? I even posed this question to the Patheos blog (and got a reply, which was super-cool!). The answer is essentially that, "to the victor, the spoils". The victor in this case was men: in Roman society, women were powerless: they had no rights, and could not own property or rule (although they could lead in church!). In Judea, it wasn't much better. Although Jesus himself welcomed women, stayed in the houses of his female friends and relied on their support, and Paul named Junia (sometimes spelt Julia) as first among the apostles in his letter to the Roman church, along with Lydia and other key female figures, by the end of the second century they were gone. Their stories were lost to us, their voices discredited. And why, you might ask?

Greek thinking was coupled with Christian reflections on God's actions in the world. The Greeks had a pretty dim view of women, and that translated into them seeing women as passive rather than active, dark rather than light - which Christian thinkers, raised in a Greek philosophical mindset, viewed as evil rather than good. Early Christian theologians such as Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome assimilated Graeco-Roman ways of viewing the world that saw women as sinful temptresses who had to be "kept in their place". This of course was complicated by the Christian interpretation of the Jewish story of Eve and the "temptation". The language of God became male, because Jesus was born male, only a male was perfect, and therefore only men were perfectly made in God's image. I kid you not: they actually thought that women's bodies weren't fully reflective of God's image because they were female. And there are still people that think that.

So, to the victor, the spoils. Women's stories, women's experiences, women's bodies, were devalued. The language of God in churches shows a deep inequality that is the result of 2000 years of false thinking and fake theology, and say, "but it's in the Bible" to continue their oppressive treatment of women's skills and experience. If people actually take the time to look at the images of God that are truly there in the Bible, they would get a shock. Here's just a few of my favourites: El Shaddai "the breasted one"; God the mother bird who shelters her chicks; Holy Wisdom, Hokmah/Sophia, who is always addressed as she in the Hebrew scriptures and who is God abroad in the world - we usually call her the Holy Spirit; the mother bear defending her young. Female images and female language for God abound.

People also say, "but Jesus called God Father - doesn't that mean we should too?" Not when you count the number of times Jesus refers to God as abba changes in the different Gospels: it's used 4 times in Mark, 15 in Luke, 49 in Matthew, and 109 in John (the Gospels were written in that order, from around 60-120AD) - surely a sign of a growing community usage, rather than Jesus’ actual words. The oldest Gospel, Mark, refers to God as abba only four times. Given the Gospels had earlier sources now lost to us, might it be possible that the word was used just once by Jesus and then latched onto by his followers as a quiet and subconscious way of reinforcing the Graeco-Roman worldview of men as pater familias, the head of the household, and its use encouraged and strengthened through the years?

So where is this language now? Where is Sophia in our churches, the Holy One, God's own presence with us? Sung a hymn to Sophia recently? If not, why not? Called God Mother lately? If not, why not? The language we use for God defines how we understand and view God and God's work in the world. If God is never addressed or referred to as She in church and in public, then how will my 8 year old daughter come to truly understand and know that she is made in God's image: in all her beautiful skin and flesh, fully reflective of God's glory in her own person - as much as any boy? How can she possibly feel that she is valued in God's house if she never hears all of God's Names - all of them, the female ones too? Will she ever have a relationship with God that sees more of God than just what someone referred to as "two men and a bird"? Will she ever feel herself equal with men - in courage, faith, pay, and work?

I truly hope she will, but only if I can help her find Sophia: God in the world. She who Is. The God who welcomes us all, and sent her child to be the redeemer of all, the Chosen One of God.

A post for Blog Action Day 2014 #inequality

Octave stretches

It's the end of the Octave of St Therese. As she is my patron and one of my deepest inspirations, I keep her feast as a full First Class Feast, with an octave (which also includes St Francis and St Bruno, which is rather nice). I was deeply disappointed to find that the NZ Lectionary doesn't even have her feast day in it and so there are no designated readings, and the Order of St Helena Breviary that I use doesn't commemorate her either. I find this surprising because she was an amazing woman who has influenced spirituality in a whole new direction in the 20th and 21st centuries. Once you get past the early, saccharine interpretations of her and start to find her depth, she is deeply courageous and enormously inspiring. I had to go online to find readings and prayers for her, but it was worth it.

So, what has come out of these days of reflection in her light and in the context of her friendship? More movement towards Sophia, the One who is calling me, and a deep frustration that when I go to worship, all I ever hear is "he, he, Lord, Lord." It always makes me think about Jesus' saying, "Not all who call me "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven" (just so I'm not accused of proof-texting, I know that is not the context of what Jesus was saying, but there is a resonance for me). I find it so disappointing that the entire Wisdom tradition and all of the tradition of Jesus as Sophia's messenger lying squarely in the Wisdom tradition has been so completely forgotten and buried under a great stinking pile of androcentrism and patriarchy.

So where next? Home by another way? And what does that really mean for me, for my vocation, my faith? What is the "other way"? And who is Home?

Plain speaking and a bit of digital spring cleaning

Regular visitors will notice that the blog has had a bit of a facelift. It had had the same layout and template for a couple of years so it seemed appropriate to have a little spring cleaning.

Some of you may wonder about the slightly changed title: "Pachyderm: home by a different way". I am still drawing inspiration from elephants, those wonderful, enigmatic, courageous creatures of the wild, but this is my blog and my story, and I am exploring new ways of being and travelling. Hints of this have already started to show on here, but let us be plain. I have begun to find Sophia, the Wisdom who is God, She who Is, who gave the Christ to us as her greatest gift. I am slowly trusting and allowing myself to travel with her, and listening as she begins to make herself known to me.

The God of my ancestors-in-faith, Hildegard, Therese, Thomas Merton, and many others, has slowly led me to understand that the image of the god that gets handed out in church is a lie. God is not male. God is not exclusively masculine. The Holy Spirit is Holy Sophia. The Creator sang for joy as she built the world. The god I have been shown in church over the last 25 years or more is a fragment and a construct of a patriarchial world that dominated women's experience and buried our stories, hiding the essential truth of God as both/and: God beyond gendered language and experience.

However, for me, here, now, I need to hear from the Creatrix, who gave the Christ-Sophia, who brought forth life from the darkness and beauty from the seed. I need to listen and hear that tiny voice that has been stifled throughout my life and in the life of the church, and find the loving face of the Holy One who sings new words in my woman's heart. I need to hear her voice, and allow myself to hear it, and trust that I can find the God who is love, above and beyond all things, who draws near to me in my own experiences, who made me in her image and likeness, and who shows her face to the world through me.

The image of God is far more than two men and a bird. And I intend to discover some of those lost and lovely names for God facing us that have been intentionally hidden from me.

So there you have it. Plain speaking for something that is anything but plain in experience.

Personality and prayer - some beginning thoughts

I was catching up with a couple of friends' posts on Facebook and spotted that an old friend posted a link to a Myers-Briggs personality test. I first did this nearly 20 years ago and came out as an ENFJ - but the E (extrovert) was very marginal, and was strongly modified by the NF, which turned me introverted. I got curious and tonight did the test again, and came out an INFJ (which I think is a better reflection of me anyway - and last time the E was only just barely an E).

The information on the INFJ personality type is scarily accurate for me and the kinds of work and prayer I like. I get a kick out of helping people - it's why I work in health and safety - but the bit I like is making sure that they don't need me any more. My aim as a consultant is to do myself out of a job with every one of my clients. I love order, I am an inveterate planner (and hate it when things mess up my plans) and I like being organised. I have a couple of things I am passionate about and I am known as a "terrier" when there's something to dig my teeth into. I have always been a perfectionist, striving to be better at what I do.

So how does this translate into prayer? I can't be a perfectionist at prayer. I am learning over the years just to show up, to pray as I am and where I am, and just to keep doing it, circling back over the psalms like a moth over a candleflame. One of the bits of information I read suggested that INFJs don't like formal prayer. That's completely the opposite of me. Praying the Office provides the solid scaffolding of my heart, and using set forms of eucharist and so on feeds me.

But, thinking about it, maybe it's the poetry of it that gives me a framework for my own inner silence. Certainly when I go to pray myself, it's in words and images that come from deep inside - but some of those have been internalised from years of praying and lectio divina. There is a drive to experience and to be, to learn and to love. It's what drew me to the Community in the first place. And maybe that's why COS is a better fit for me than the Franciscans too - Benedictines are about work and prayer, Camaldolese are about the Three Goods: solitude, community, and service/mission. That about sums me up really.

A taste of Benedictine hospitality

Some people would think that the name "the Community of Solitude" is a bit of an oxymoron. How can you have a community of solitaries, or have solitude when you're a community? I must admit there have been times I have asked myself that too. I understand a little better now. 

The last week of July was the Convocation of the Community in Minnesota, USA. We were the guests of St John's Abbey, a Benedictine Community in Collegeville (home of the Liturgical Press - the joke in the community was that it had to be be a Benedictine abbey because it had two bookshops as well as the library!). The setting was beautiful, but the convocation even

The huge bell tower at St John's

more so. 16 members of our Community gathered, sharing the daily Office with the monks of St John's (singing the Office with over 120 monks in choir four times a day is something I will never forget), meeting, talking, praying, laughing together, going for walks, and just being together showed me how rich and how deep our COS community life is. We have a "virtual" community most of the time, sharing our lives through our prayer, email and skype, but seeing them face to face and sharing their hearts was a gift I treasure. 

Our solitude enriched our time together: we shared the "fruits of our solitude" at the dinner table, in our meetings together, and in our general chats. 

We each pray the Office ourselves, but sharing that prayer together made it immeasurably richer and deeper. I use the Breviary of the Order of St Helena in my private Office; the St John's one was different to what I am used to but doing it as a corporate community activity changed it in ways I didn't expect. 

The stained glass in the Abbey church

The pace St John's chant the psalms is a lot slower than I am used to, and it took a bit to get used to. However, I began to find that giving the psalms space like that allowed them to speak more deeply. I also appreciated the sermons of the monk-priests of St John's during the daily Mass: they were very short (no more than 5-10 minutes at the most) but they were profound in their meaning. 

Statue of St John in Abbey church baptistry
(courtesy Br Thomas Andrew COS Cam)

The best one came for me on the feast of Sts Joachin and Anne (parents of the Virgin Mary), when the priest reflected that he had had the same Gospel reading just two weeks' previously: the last time he preached to the Community! He then reflected that our monastic lives are like that: recircling around the same truths, coming closer and closer like a moth to a candleflame. We persevere, as he said, "in the good days, and bad days, and sometimes just days." That phrase captured everyone: choir is a very solemn, beautiful, formal place but there was a ripple of smiles as everyone there completely understood what he meant. Often it is just days, when we walk faithfully, but may not see too many results. It's like the light moving through the stained glass: it looks different at every time of day, but some days it stands out more than others. Some days the Office is full of light and life and joy: other days it's an act of sheer faith to keep going, keep praying, keep singing, keep hoping. 

The stained glass in the Abbey church, viewed from the monks' choir
This is completely huge - this photo cannot capture the size and majesty of it.

St Benedict with his Rule and the ravens

I found myself profoundly touched by the art around the Abbey. It felt like the fruits of the monks' contemplations was made physical, made visible, for us all to share. The fierce St John in the baptistry stood guard over the entrance into the church, but the gentle St Benedict in the Abbey university grounds invited us in to share with him in his hospitality, life, and love. He looked young, passionate, warm, and caring: inviting us to share the feast of his Rule and the richness of study and prayer and laughter. I liked his rolled-up sleeves: Ora te Labora: prayer and work (or to work is to pray).

One thing I found quite amazing was how much fun we had together. It started from the moment I was met at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport (after a 36 hour journey!) by two of my Brothers, and it didn't stop all the time we were together. There was a lot of "monastic humour": one of my personal favourites was when we were having a COS photo taken after Office one night. The person taking the photo couldn't figure out if it had been taken because the camera didn't make any noise: one of the Brothers piped up, "That's because it's a Cistercian camera!" 

Returning home, all 36 hours of it, was quite tough. I was glad to see my family again, but I had grown even closer to my monastic family than before and I miss the regular prayer in choir at St John's, shared with the St John's monks and my own Brothers and Sisters. But I return to my cell, and keep the faith quietly in the regular things - the "just days" of my life - and find in those things the courage I need to keep loving and praying, being faithful in the big stuff and the small daily things. 

I suspect there will be more "fruits of solitude" from my time at Convocation popping up. I had to make a start with the simple basic things, and I promised some of the photos!

Romuald and Wordsworth

St Romuald's Brief Rule says, "Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.... Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what their mother brings them." In that being is peace. The world may come with us into our cell, our place of prayer, but when it comes with us it comes into the paradise of God's grace, and wonderful things are possible there.

The world is too much with us, and sometimes at the moment it feels very much too much with us. Wars and rumours of wars, fear, hatred, death, loss, pain, grief. What can I do in the midst of so much suffering? My little efforts feel like less than the widow's mite. But I need to remind myself of what I am, of who God has asked me to be: to dwell in my inner place as if it were paradise and wait there. Even though it feels quite often as though no-one else has turned up - to wait there is a gift and it is paradise. My inner cell is the doorstep to heaven and I should be content to sit and wait there, whether there is sunshine or rain, and know that the world I have put behind me is part of me and is waiting on the doorstep with me, gathered to paradise in my heart.

But no-one said it would be easy. As one of the monks at St John's Abbey preached, in our monastic round of rediscoveries and re-echoes and revisiting the same truths day after day, "we have good days, and bad days, and sometimes just days". And quite often its raining on the doorstep, or it's cold, and frequently it is lonely and dark and dispiriting, and sunshine and light and love seem like a distant dream. A long obedience in the same direction, as Eugene Peterson called one of his books, requires sitting on the doorstep even in the winter when the snow is piled so high we cannot see over it and springtime seems a million years away.

But then there are the days when the daffodils are dancing in my garden and the first of the tulips are poking through the ground, the sun is warm on my back as I do a bit of weeding, and the tree down the road is pink with blossom: to sit on the doorstep of my heart on those days is easy and the whole day bubbles with a deep and subtle joy, even when the world is too much with us and seems to be falling around my ears and I don't know what to pray or to say or to do to help. Maybe it's enough. I pray that it is.

She who is - for me

It doesn't seem like nearly a whole month since I last blogged, but the calendar tells a different tale!

The usual lots going on, but there is one thing that I'm thinking about a lot. In my last post, I talked about some niggles I was experiencing over the naming of God and the location of women's experience in our history and traditions. I have continued to explore those issues. Hubby and I are reading She Who Is: the mystery of God in feminist theological discourse, by the wonderful Sr Elizabeth Johnson. Her book is a comprehensive theological and biblical analysis of images of God, testing the hypothesis that there are images of God that are feminine in our tradition, the biblical text, and classical and contemporary theology, and more importantly, that we need to recover these images because our language defines our experience. Women cannot experience the wholeness of the imago dei, bring made in God's own image, if they cannot find language for God taken from our experience as women.

I was willing to test this hypothesis, and I found, to my surprise and my joy, that the text, history, and theology fully supports images and language for God that is female. Wisdom, the Spirit of God, is consistently spoken of as "she" in the wisdom literature. El Shaddai is an image of God as "the breasted one" (from shad, breast - an alternative extraction can also be from the word for mountain -which looks like a breast!). The Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters like a mother bird. God gathers us under her wings like a mother bird gathers her chicks. We together raised an objection in that Jesus refers to God as "abba" - "father": but in the analysis of the biblical texts, Jesus calling God father is used '4 times in Mark, 15 in Luke, 49 in Matthew, and 109 in John' (Johnson, p.81) - which when you lay these alongside the dates of the creation of the gospels, shows clearly that this usage is reflecting a growing tradition rather than necessarily the actual language of Jesus himself.

We're only halfway through, but already I find a change in me. Finding and using the images of God as mother, as Sophia, as She who Is, is invigorating my prayer and my understanding of myself as being the bearer of God's image and likeness. A flawed mirror I might be, but at least I can reflect, in my whole person and in my essential femaleness, God's wholeness and essential nature as divine, beyond gender and containing the fullness of femaleness and maleness. I am in God as God as in me. God, the Breasted One, Sophia, the creator of all, the one who breathes fresh life into the world and its people, is the ground of my being, and she is the brightness and love and joy and wisdom of this world.

I have moved, too, from my previous version of the Divine Office (Benedictine Daily Prayer, that I had been using since 2012). I found suddenly that I kept getting tripped up in the language and imagery for God, and it was interrupting my prayer. I discovered that the sisters of the Order of St Helena had retranslated and re-imaged their Breviary to find expansive language for God through a process of over 20 years - not just replacing "father" with God or gender-neutral pronouns, but truly looking for the images of God that have always been there but hidden. And bless them, they made their work available to others. The Monastic Breviary (available now only in pdf) even includes their chant tunes, and shows the years and years they spent with the texts, praying and chanting them, trying to find the right words and feelings and expressions for God's grace that does not use masculine pronouns or images for God. And the result is stunning. I haven't felt so joyous in my prayer of the Office for years. I've used many versions of the Divine Office in the last 15 years, but this is probably the most influential and the most beautiful.

I have also found The Inclusive Bible, another 20-year translation project undertaken by scholars of the highest order, seeking to do justly by the text and images of God, male and female. That only arrived yesterday, but again I find myself approaching the texts with joy again. I read through the first 15 chapters of Genesis last night, and I was stunned. I am extremely familiar with ch.1-3, having spent a large chunk of time in my Judaism studies with that text, and another large chunk when I was at theological college studying the Pentateuch. I've read it in Hebrew and in many different English translations, analysed it, pulled it apart, theologised over it, agonised with it, and lived with it in a scholarly and personal way for long enough to recognise when the scholarship is good. And the scholarship as shown in this translation is superb. It captures the wonderful word-play of the Yahwist author in ch.2-3, and shows the grandeur and beauty of the Priestly author of ch.1. All of this, and it reads aloud beautifully. I also dipped into several of my favourite NT passages to compare the translation, and I love it.

What's more, I read some of it aloud to small daughter tonight, and it was amazing to see her eyes light up like stars. She heard her own experiences reflected in the biblical stories for the first time, and it was a beautiful thing to see.

So, can my image of God expand? Can I reflect more of God if I break the patriarchial idol of masculine language for God? Yes, and yes, and yes again. I can find more of God, more of God's nature, more of God's essential goodness and being-with-us, if I allow myself to trust that female images and language for God are essential to allowing myself to see God's fullness of work in the world, in and through us. I only hope I am up to the challenge. Sophia, She who Is, the ground of my being, the source of life and truth, wholeness, healing and challenge for the whole world, the God who holds the universe and continually breathes it into being. It's going to be an interesting journey!